The Perfection of Despair
by Gaming Ikari
Summary: I die. Then I wake back up on the same desk, in the same school. The same Academy of Despair. I've lost track of how many times I've tried to escape, tried to save everyone. Yet I will escape. I will save everyone. No matter how often I fail, I'll keep going until one day I succeed. My name is Naegi Makoto, and this is my story.
1. Chapter 1

The Perfection of Despair

Chapter 1: Seventy One

o6037o

Despite it all, I wasn't able to prove that Celes had murdered Yamada after tricking him into murdering Ishimaru, with everything pinned on Hagakure. Togami sided against me and where he went Fukawa followed. Celes managed to convince Aoi that I was being totally unreasonable, especially in the face of the well-fitting suit I knew Yamada had made for Hagakure. Sakura sided with Aoi's decision... leaving only Hagakure and myself sure of his innocence.

Everyone but myself, Hagakure, and Kirigiri voted wrong and Celes was allowed to graduate.

We were all going to burn for my mistakes.

As the flames licked my feet, I barely had time to ponder the errors I'd made before Monokuma drove a fire truck right through us.

I felt an infinite pressure on my chest for a moment before everything went bright and I lost all sensation.

o6038o

I woke up in the desk.

Again.

I stretched and pondered my mistake. It seemed to me, in those last moments before time reset, that I'd forgotten to gather the actual evidence proving Yamada had moved his own 'corpse' by discovering the glasses-cloth in the garbage bin in the infirmary.

Without that, I couldn't conclusively prove to anyone that he'd moved himself.

Without proof that he'd moved himself, it could have been Hagakure before we found him, sneaking about and donning the suit afterward.

I nodded once to myself in confirmation. I couldn't forget that, next time. It was an amateurish mistake, and one Kirigiri would have given me no end of grief over. If we became friends this time.

Then again, maybe I should finally focus on learning a bit more about Kuwata? He was typically killed so early that I've never really gotten to know him, yet. There's hardly any time at all before Maizuno tricks him with the note and gets herself killed after attempting to murder him. I suppose too, that I did tend to feel some resentment towards him from the first time, when he killed Maizuno. I knew it wasn't really his fault, but... first impressions are a big deal for a reason.

I put off the decision for now.

It's time to go meet everyone in the entrance hall before Oozawa knocks me out in the gym.

o6038o

Enoshima's death bothers me because, for all that I've tried to prevent it, nothing seemed to work. With the others if I don't stick to the script, the general series of actions which leads me down a path I can predict, if I can nudge them one way or the other things changed. If I confront Maizuno about her plot, she breaks down sobbing and becomes wracked with guilt. If I switch the nameplates back before Kuwata visits her in my room, the murder never happens and Kuwata is just annoyed by "my" prank. If I'm with Fujisaki when he confesses his secret to Oowada, he doesn't lose control. If I spend time with Celes and pretend to notice she's really common but accept her for it, it breaks down her facade enough that she doesn't enlist Yamada in her murder plot.

However for Enoshima, she always mouths off to Monokuma, crushes him under her foot, and then gets stabbed by a bunch of spears. It's almost like she's following some script of her own.

I can try calming her down about the situation in the entrance hall and even if she's a little grateful, she gets riled up anyway in the gym. I can try shoving her out of the way, but without fail she just backhands me away with reflexes better fitting a fighter like Sakura than a supermodel before stomping Monokuma, barely missing a beat.

Charging Monokuma myself just ends up with me killed: If it changes things, I don't know how. I just find myself waking up once more on that desk, to a fresh bout of despair academy. All this and more went through my mind as I made my way to the entrance hall.

I met Maizuno's eyes, seeing the flash of recognition, and suppressed a wince as I greeted my fellow classmates. This is the worst part about all of this. If Maizuno starts her plan and tries to frame me for killing Kuwata, I can guarantee the sequence of events which will follow.

After I prove my innocence and Kuwata's guilt, Oowada will bond with Ishimaru and then kill Fujisaki... and because all of that is so straightforward, I know what Togami will and won't do, generally. I also know that the money Monokuma offers will be enough to drive Celes over the edge, and as long as I'm careful, I'm sure I can soon conclusively prove her guilt.

The problem is that if I don't let Maizuno die by Kuwata's hands, if I don't let her scheme be the first, Togami and Fukawa become total wild cards as soon as Monokuma starts pressuring us to commit the first murder. Sometimes Togami learns that Fukawa is Genocider Syo early enough to use her like Celes typically uses Yamada. Sometimes he convinces Fukawa to take the fall for him. Sometimes he gets creative without either of those two personalities and, at a whim decided by God knows what, he'll murder someone chosen at random in a near-perfectly undiscoverable way after someone else cracks and he learns how Kirigiri and I investigate.

Whatever causes it, even with these repeats, I can't predict his movements from one moment to the next if he makes the first move. Because I can't predict his movements, even if I catch him, whatever happens afterward is nearly as random... though Genocider deciding to take revenge on me happens quite often if I'm the one who proves Togami's guilt and gets him executed.

Those memories brought me a bit of a shiver. Syo is damned creative with her scissors, she knows very, very well how to corner someone where nobody can hear them scream, and as long as her identity isn't revealed she's quite willing to kill. At least Monokuma's executions tended to be over in a matter of minutes.

As I went along with the flow, I pondered my options. Either I could stick with my script for this reset and see who the fifth victim would be after Ishimaru and Yamada, or I could go off the rails of my own plan and try to spend more time gathering information about the people I was still in the dark about. Both would give me more information which might eventually allow me to escape this place with everyone alive.

While I was musing and following my script without really paying attention, Oowada had enough of my backtalk and moved to punch me out. I was so lost in my thoughts about Enoshima and my plans, however, that I forgot to suppress my instincts: I slipped inside his guard, the blow slipping by my left shoulder as I put all my weight into a beautiful right uppercut which rocked the Super High School Level Biker up into a wobble before he fell on his back, unconscious.

I blinked at my fist while the rest of my classmates blinked at me. I noted Sakura's sudden grin and was very, very sorry I'd given into the instincts she'd trained into me, many resets ago.

The first time Sakura had trained me it was basic self-defense stuff, which I'd requested fresh off of a reset which ended at Genocider's tender mercies. However the next reset, she'd noticed that I moved like an ill-trained warrior, and offered to coach me a bit more right from the start. A dozen resets later, and I was someone she thought she might be able to train into a worthy opponent one day. A couple hundred resets or so after that and she was actively lamenting that someone with my obvious skills didn't take care to sculpt his body to the degree his skills needed to truly shine.

While I treasured the time I spent with the slightly terrifying girl, I'd had to cut them off at that point. If I befriended Sakura that early she would not befriend Asahina to the extent she usually did. Without Sakura around as a big scary watchdog, the ditzy girl usually got murdered in short order when someone was looking for a victim.

It was the only thing more unpredictable than Togami: Without Sakura Oogami constantly spending time with her, Aoi Asahina would get murdered in a dozen different ways by a half-dozen different people. I don't even know how she got Ishimaru to kill her that one reset, but it happened.

However as I tightened my fist and grinned, I had a realization. I hadn't yet tried to prevent Enoshima's death since my resets with Sakura. I could easily do it this time.

o6038o

It was now the same tableau I'd seen thousands of times before by now.

Monokuma and Enoshima having their standoff, though this time was unique: This time, I knew I could stop it. So as Enoshima stomped on Monokuma, I charged. Enoshima turned as I did, knowing as she somehow always did that I was planning to interfere.

This time, when she moved to backhand me away, I slipped underneath and dove forwards in a running tackle which would have carried us both clear... Had she not turned her backhand into a backflip, using me as a launching pad and leaving me to stumble and grasp air as I fell on top of Monokuma .

I can't say being impaled was a new experience, but it was still very unpleasant. I got a confused impression of a blond wig falling off and Enoshima's short, black hair tumbling down beside her surprised face before I coughed one last time and died.

As I woke up in the first classroom once more as time reset, I laughed out loud.

Well, this explained a lot.

Enoshima was a faker. She wasn't blond at all, and if she was truly just a Super Duper High School Supermodel there was no way she'd have been able to manhandle and dodge me the way she just had, not with the skills Oogami Sakura had drilled into me over the time I'd been resetting.

That got me wondering... What else was she hiding? Now that... Well, that would be interesting.

Well... No time like the present.

o6039o

There are two ways to solve a mystery like this.

Were I not trapped in time as I was, it would have been a long sequence of slowly peeling back the layers of her deception to get to the core of things. However I had picked up a few tricks over my thousands of deaths and the first thing I'd learned was that death was cheap for me now.

Being able to go back to the beginning whenever I die gives me the ability to do something incredibly reckless if it will solve a problem for me quicker.

So as soon as I came within sight of the entrance hallway, I began sprinting at top speed. I flashed through the open door at a full run and Junko Enoshima barely had time to glance towards me to see what the fuss was before I launched a quick right hook towards her face.

Despite poor footing and being caught off guard, Enoshima twisted her body smoothly out of the way and guided me to the floor with a trip. Only my time with Sakura allowed me to get my feet down and step once before turning and launching a brutal roundhouse kick right where Junko's face had been.

She, however, had thrown herself back and produced a knife from somewhere on her person as I observed her, my momentum bled out from the kick.

"The only person here who should have been able to block that attack is Oogami," I declared, glancing at the silver-haired amazon. She looked unsettled by my sudden attack, but was also staring at Enoshima with undisguised interest. "There is no way you should have been able to dodge that. Who are you?"

"I'm as interested as you are," Junko declared, glaring viciously at me. "Makoto Naegi could never have been so skilled. Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm Makoto Naegi," I shrugged simply. "Perhaps you just underestimated me?"

"Impossible," Junko hissed, before charging me with her knife.

Oogami, in previous resets, had come at me with her full strength during the rare times she decided we should spar seriously. She'd felt I was ready, but the quick work she generally made of me proved her wrong on that count.

As Enoshima closed on me she didn't quite hit Sakura's overwhelming speed and strength, but she was a lot better at predicting my movements: If I'd been asked to pick who would win in a fight between Junko and Oogami, I'm not sure I could have picked correctly.

As my classmates scattered and even Sakura stared at the fight, stunned, I quickly lost ground as I ducked, dodged, and weaved out of the way of my foe's attacks. It didn't help when one of my shoes got knocked off by a sweep attempt, leaving me with slippery footing on one side. Before long I was pinned to a wall, the knife at my throat.

"Who are you!?" Enoshima yelled at me, and I flinched in the face of the raw anger there. There was desperation there. Perhaps even just despair. I'd never seen that in her eyes before.

"Who are you?" I whispered in turn, and her face crumpled a bit.

"So we're both imposters," Enoshima hissed, too quiet for anyone else to hear. The knife began to press in. "Your game stops here, though, whoever your are."

"You're right," I agreed, wrenching my head to the side and slitting my throat on her knife. It surprised her quite a bit, if the panicked scream she let loose was any indication of her feelings on the matter. I had a moment to ponder that as I bled out.

o6040o

So... Enoshima wasn't Enoshima at all, huh? Interesting. It explained why she'd never quite looked right to me beside the photos of her in magazines. I had to internally applaud her for coming up with the photoshop ruse, though. I'd have never suspected anything if I'd been a normal person.

Well, that had been a short reset.

This one, however, would be shorter. Whatever game Monokuma's owner was playing, he really didn't like it when someone knew more than they should have. However if I played the situation right, I could typically get a bit of useful information out of him.

I coughed, sure it would get the attention of whoever was behind all this.

"I wonder if the headmaster has cleared his files out of the secret room behind the second floor men's room supply closet?" I asked, seemingly to myself.

That one always got a Monokuma front and center.

"How does a naughty boy like you know that?" Monokuma's voice demanded. That would rattle the person controlling him long enough that my next statement would typically get an unfiltered response out of the situation.

"The same way I know Enoshima is an imposter," I said with a smug smile. It always drove them over the edge when I was smug about it. I'm not a smug person, but for whoever controls Monobear, I can make an exception.

"You can't know that. It's impossible!" Monobear hissed, before exploding. Needless to say, I woke back up in the classroom a minute or two previous to when I'd died, to begin a new reset once again.

While I'd learned nothing startling from the dual-coloured bear this time, it did confirm that whoever was running this sick game knew Junko Enoshima was a fake.

I got up and continued on with the present reset. It was time to see if my newly acquired knowledge could save the false Junko Enoshima, and if that would effect my plans.

o6041o

For all that I now knew, it was incredibly frustrating trying to get the fake Enoshima to open up enough for me to warn her properly. If I spilled the beans too early or admitted I knew too much, she would just get defensive about it and ignore me or sometimes even kill me if she thought I was an imposter. If I tried to interfere too late, she still died.

It took me seventeen resets just to get the approximate timing down. As we were walking into the gym to where she would soon die, I simply whispered, "Jump back after you stomp Monobear."

Those instructions were too direct. I saw her tense as soon as she stomped the remote controlled abomination, but when nothing happened, she relaxed. That meant she couldn't dodge the attack when it did come moments later.

Fourteen resets later, and I'd learned that I first needed a vague warning as we entered the gym. That would put her guard up just enough to listen to me when I shouted later, but I also needed to compact everything about her upcoming death into the second or two I had to shout before she died once more.

"Enoshima, at your feet!" or "Enoshima, below you!" and a few variations thereof only convinced her to kick the Monokuma duplicate away.

"Enoshima, the spears!" was completely wrong: Her eyes would dart up and she wouldn't even be looking Monokuma in the face when she was repeatedly impaled.

At this point, I took a vacation reset. I stopped Maizuno's plot, I was with Fujisaki when he confessed his feelings of weakness to Oowada, and I even managed to find time to convince Celes that trying to murder people was a bad idea.

Of course by this time I'd also been spending most of my mornings sparring with Oogami for a month, and I guess between being 'cool and aloof' because of ignoring Fukawa and a month of hard training putting the hint of abs on my thin frame, I made a perfect target for Genocider Syo when she broke free.

Especially with Togami being smart enough to be within shouting distance of Sakura most of the time once he'd figured out who Fukawa's other half was.

Not that he'd bothered to tell any of us that fact.

Togami's kind of a jerk.

At least Genocider Syo had struck in the baths, so I got a good look before things went bad. Despite all my time at the school, I'd never really grown close to Fukawa in that way. Between my generally helpful, outgoing nature and her general habit of becoming infatuated with Byakuya, we'd never really grown close enough that seeing her as I did that reset.

My view was rapidly distracted by the scissors in her hands. However, at the time I was confident that I could prevail. I'd long since lost track of how many hours I'd spent sparring with Oogami, so that surely counted for something. I'd braced myself for her charge, promising myself that I would resolve things without bloodshed.

The short fight showed me one thing: For all that I knew how to fight fist on fist, I knew exactly nothing about fighting someone who was adept with an edged weapon. The first pass had seen me cupping a pair of what I'd thought were minor wounds, but it hadn't taken me long to realize they wouldn't stop bleeding.

It didn't take long from there for me to grow weak and feeble, to find myself unable to fight off my assailant any longer.

I died screaming, in a lot of pain, with nobody to help me.

It was as good a wake up call from my little vacation as any.

After a couple resets to remember my frame of mind, I turned my attention to the problem: No matter what I did, the false Enoshima wouldn't recognize that the threat came from below Monokuma. She wouldn't see that the floorboards were...

It took a lot of effort to not smack myself in the face.

o6108o

"Enoshima, the floorboards!" worked on the first try, and she finally used her reflexes to dodge the damned spears. Her face actually went white with shock at the sight of the weapons, her freckles standing out even more than normal, and she completely ignored the way her wig had been knocked askew.

"Oh?" Monokuma declared from the gym's podium, ignoring his skewered twin. He tilted his head as he looked at me, and his voice changed. Grew desperate. "When did you get such good instincts, Naegi-kun? Is it that you're working with the terrorist Mukuro Ikasuba!? She's responsible for locking you in this school, you know!"

Well, that was a lie if I've ever heard one.

"I nearly had her with that trap, and you let her get away!" Monokuma growled, turning to my fellow students. "My name is Besshiki Madarai, and I'm here to help! I'm the Super High School Level Hacker, and I've commandeered this Monokuma unit. Mukuro is a terrorist with Fenrir, and she's probably coerced Naegi into helping her!"

As everyone paused in shock, I frowned. The person Monokuma identified as Mukuro Ikasuba wasn't denying the allegation, I noted. Then again, I'd noticed enough discrepancies to foil the mastermind's current plot easily. As Mukuro inhaled to speak, I beat her to the punch.

And it wasn't even a student trial.

"You're wrong!" I declared to Monokuma, pointing with my finger. "If you were really a hacker coming to help us instead of the mastermind, you could have detonated the Monokuma unit you used to lure Ikasuba into the trap to simply blow her up if she was the real threat! Because you didn't, we know that the mastermind behind this was the one who wanted Ikasuba dead!"

I stepped forward and noticed that my fellow students, some of whom had been starting to be swayed by Monokuma's transparent lie, were now watching only the remote-controlled bear with wariness as they rallied behind my speech.

"Furthermore, isn't it suspicious that you only took control of Monokuma's speech when your plot to kill Ikasuba failed, Madarai? If it's true that your intention was to warn us about the threat, why wait until after your plot failed to speak to us? Also, if I'm in on it with Mukuro Ikasuba as you claim, why didn't you try to include me as one of your initial targets?" I heard murmurs of agreement behind me, and crossed my arms.

"Plus, if you're really a hacker trying to help us, why be so blatant? No doubt the Monokuma units are a lot harder to hack than some more subtle means of sending us a message, and by taking control like you have during the first announcement, the headmaster and whoever is working with him would be taking rapid steps to neutralize you and contain us right now. If you were really trying to help us, why wouldn't you open up an escape route when nobody was looking?"

Time to fire the kill shot.

"There is no Besshiki Madarai, and this is a transparent ploy to turn us against one another, Monokuma!" I finished.

Silence. Then...

"Upupupupu... Perhaps you should be the Super High School Level Detective instead of Kirigiri, Naegi," Monobear stated with a chuckle. He tilted his head a bit. "Did you really spoil my plans so completely just because you noticed the trap I'd prepared? I'll have to fix that for next time."

Next time? Then I heard it. The slight sound of gas being piped into the room. Given the way my head was starting to go slightly fuzzy, the headmaster had probably started it while I was in the middle of my speech.

I'd been gassed before by Monokuma. It typically cost me the useful memories from a reset, and sometimes even more. It wasn't something I planned to repeat. Thankfully, I had options. Holding my breath to keep from breathing in ever-increasing concentrations from the gas, I sprinted forward and nailed the active Monokuma with a pretty good kick.

"Oh?" The bear asked with a dark smile. "I guess you're right. You're probably too big a threat to my plans to allow you to live anyway. Bye bye!"

The explosion ripped me apart, and an instant later I was waking up at my desk.

Well.

Now I had a name to go with the fake.

o6109o

Author's Notes:

Yeah. So really, really don't expect this to be updated any time soon. This is just a random plot bunny I cooked up and hammered out after playing the game with my brother. It's been sort of a free-write project, and since it doesn't entirely suck I'll let you all take a gander.

I mean, it's on my "Gotta finish" docket, and I imagine it'll only be about six or seven more chapters about as long as this before the end, but I don't see it being a priority.

Upupupu...

Oh, and one more thing! Go watch _Dusk Maiden of Amnesia_ right the hell now, if you haven't watched it already. Then order the DVDs so the creators will make more sweet shit which is awesome, because god damn that was awesome. I managed to miss the initial broadcast, and me and my bro watched the first episode on a whim the other night. Then we marathon'd entire series the entire night, getting him yelled at by his girlfriend for getting home so late, because it's a ridiculously good, refreshing series. Go watch. NOW.

-Gaming Ikari


	2. Chapter 2

The Perfection of Despair

Chapter 2: Zero.

o6109o

This time, I knew I couldn't really deviate from my assumed abilities too much.

No knocking out Oowada or taking a swing at En... Ikasuba. The mysterious girl impersonating Enoshima would get suspicious if I were too direct about confronting her. She'd think I myself was an imposter if I displayed any fighting skills whatsoever. However, I did have another option.

It's something I'd been thinking about since I'd discovered she was a fake. She'd fooled me even the first time with her excuse, but I'd still noticed something was off when it happened. It didn't blow my cover then to notice, not that I'd had cover to blow, so surely it wouldn't blow my cover now.

I'd just have to come to a different conclusion.

One which could possibly change things.

o6109o

My introduction to my fellow classmates went roughly the same as it always did when I reverted to being what I used to be, before this academy. Before every failure of mine led me back to my desk, to wake up on the first day once more. I'd gone through them so many times that I was able to mostly coast by on autopilot for them.

I stopped my mind from wandering only when I stepped over to introduce myself to Enoshima's imposter.

"Yo! My name's Junko Enoshima! Great to meet you!" Mukuro chirped, a broad grin splitting her face as she raised her hand and flashed a V with her fingers.

"Something about you looks a little different," I told her, forcing myself to sound confused. Looking for it now, for the first time since I'd done these introductions, I could see what the instincts I'd picked up from Kirigiri were now telling me: Just the act of noticing the difference was something which had made her distinctly uncomfortable.

"My magazine cover shots?" Junko asked, freckles showing through the thin layer of powder and blush on her cheek as she went a little pale. She covered it with the same broad grin she'd flashed me in the first place. "Isn't it natural? They were modified by the editors, of course!"

"Modified?" Normally at this point in the conversation, my tone was simply conversational. However this time, I injected a bit of doubt. Not much, but enough to throw her off a bit. There's those freckles again: If Mukuro were a gambler, Celes would eat her alive without even trying.

"Photoshopped, y'know? You've never heard of image editing?" Same chirpy voice, same smile. Normally in the conversation, this is where I back off and let her lead me down the path of the lie she'd crafted to steer it away, using the fact Maizuno was frequently photoshopped by her own photographers for her stills and album covers.

"That's not it," I concluded with a shake of my head. I gestured vaguely in Sayaka's direction. "Even if she's got slightly darker skin and slightly smaller eyes, everything else is the same. There's something else that's off about you."

More freckles appearing. Again: Celes would eat her alive without even trying.

"I'm sure it's not important," I brushed off, waving my hands.

From there, Monokuma made his announcement for us to assemble in the gym, and everyone began to disperse, with Enoshima's imposter Mukuro Ikasuba hanging back as well as Yamada, Sakura, Kirigiri, and Maizuno. After a few muttered comments, even we began to make our way to the gym.

It took a clever fake slip to put myself in a position to roll my ankle and fall flat onto my ass. It was actually unsurprising to me that Enoshima was the first one at my side: Maizuno wouldn't try and use me as she generally did until after the announcement, Kirigiri was ever aloof, and Yamada and Sakura were ahead of me.

Enoshima's false self had always displayed quite a lot of friendliness for a girl who was supposed to be a supermodel, especially one who should have been used to the attention of men. Perhaps it was just for me, but she always seemed to be helpful and kind.

"Sorry," I hissed, allowing her to pull me to my feet. I'd slipped in one of the camera deadzones in the academy, so whoever the person controlling Monkuma was, they couldn't hear me. I made a point of glancing at the camera far down the hall, too far to see us. "I don't think whoever is in charge can see or hear us here. I had to talk to you."

"I'm sorry, what?" Junko drawled, stepping back as I gingerly put a foot down.

"This whole situation is messed up," I explained, glancing up and down the hallway, shifting my weight a bit and testing the pain in my ankle. It wasn't too bad, but you can't really fake a tumble like that and have it look good. You have to just do it and hope it doesn't hurt too badly afterward. "There is obviously something very wrong here."

"Why tell me? I'm just a model. Why not tell someone like Sakura, who could probably do something about it?" Enoshima asked, frowning a bit at me.

"Sakura's not wearing a fake wig," I informed her, smiling a bit at the way her face went bone white. I shook my head. "That's what was bothering me. In her photos, Enoshima has natural hair. You have a very, very good wig on, but it's not natural. That, and your jaw is a little different and you carry yourself with a lot more confidence. You're not Junko Enoshima, you're an imposter."

Mukuro stared at me, wordless.

"I'm sure you have your reasons, and I'm sure whoever's in charge doesn't care about them. Maybe you're here to rescue us and I hope I haven't spoiled that," I offered, knowing that the statement was likely false but downplaying any suspicions I might have. "I'll keep this to myself. Let's just go to this meeting and discuss it later, alright?"

"We will," she informed me, her voice suddenly hard.

o6109o

For all that she was concerned about talking with me, we didn't. I coasted through the time between when she was due to die and when we'd spoken with little thought, allowing Maizuno to trick me into switching rooms with her. I stayed awake and waited until I heard the sound of Sayaka switching our nameplates, then waited ten long, agonizing minutes before I snuck into the hallway and switched them back.

When Leon came to my door, annoyed, I quickly searched for someone I could pin the blame on. With my ankle the way it was, I really didn't want him coming at me and deciding he could escape this place by murdering me. It might even turn Maizuno into a suspect herself, a dark part of me noted with an appreciation for the irony.

Yamada or Hakagure? That'd just wind up with them getting hurt. Neither was a fighter in the least.

Togami or Ishimaru? They'd never be caught dead playing a prank like putting a fake note under someone's door. Leon wouldn't buy it.

Oowada? Maybe, but I had a better patsy in mind.

"I think I saw Oogami hanging around outside your door," I informed Leon, frowning a bit. He froze at that, freezing before he could begin to talk. "Maybe she's waiting to see how you react to the note before confessing to you? She's always keeping her eyes on you when I was looking at her, you know?"

"T-t-t-t-t-the Ogre? Me?" Leon spat, and it took all of my willpower not to smirk at that. It occurred to me that he was familiar enough with Sakura to know her nickname, so that was a point in his favour. He'd done his research the same as I had before coming here.

"Maybe she has a thing for redheads?" I pondered to myself, Kuwata groaning as he wordlessly turned and walked away.

oOo

Monokuma made his morning roll call, though he sounded slightly annoyed when he did so. Perhaps he'd seen me foil the murder plan, because he called for an assembly as soon as we'd finished eating breakfast.

We moved to the gym, and Monokuma stood front and centre on the podium.

"Ma, you guys are boring! I told you that all you had to do was murder someone and you could be free of this place, and not one of you even managed to off one of your classmates last night!" The bear complained, waving a hand. "Perhaps it's for the best, then, that you didn't! I forgot to explain the supplementary rules!"

Here Monokuma began to explain the rules for the graduation. That we had to not only kill one of our fellow classmates, but we also had to do it without getting caught. Not only that, but that graduation by one of us would mean the death of the rest of us.

As our ElectroIDs beeped, notifying us of the change to the school rules, I made a change of my own.

"Hey, wait just a minute!" I snapped, stalking towards the bear. I stopped at the place where Junko's fake had been killed thousands of times before, ignoring Mukuro's growing panic as I stole her lines for my own. "What you're saying, it's all so demented!"

"Huh?" Monokuma's reaction wasn't necessarily different on the surface, but even through the animated toy bear's speakers and annoying voice, I thought I detected something else: Interest.

"Isn't it obvious? Why do we have to kill one another and then figure it out? Isn't it all messed up?" I demanded, my arm snapping to my side in apparent frustration. It wasn't an exact recreation of Mukuro's speech, but Leon hadn't killed Maizuno yet.

I had to adapt.

"So you're saying you won't cooperate?" Monokuma demanded, head tilting. "If that's the case, I'll have to penalize you!"

"A penalty?" I demanded, frowning.

"Maybe... I'll lock you up in a dark scary cell..." Monokuma was attempting to be threatening, but it wasn't long ago that I turned to find Genocider Syo sneaking up on me with her scissors and nobody around to hear me scream. After that, vague threats were a little low on my scale.

"Oh, just shut up," I growled, glancing away and at the ground. In my peripheral vision I could see Mukuro's face, bone white. "I don't care what you say! I'll never go along with something like this!"

"It's your body. Do as you please!" Monokuma told me.

"Shouldn't that be you?" I retored, glaring at the stuffed bear once more. "Telling us to kill each other... I won't have anything to do with it!"

"Seeing such overwhelming determination, it's truly exciting!" Monokuma praised, panting, before his eyes glowed dangerously. "Nevertheless... I will not bend the rules for your sake. I'm a bear of high principles, you know."

Claws burst from the fake fur of the bear's paws.

"If you try to sway me..." Monokuma began, charging forward, "I'll get you first!"

Even if I'd had just my ordinary reaction time from my original life, stomping the charging bear flat would have been no great challenge. I did so, eliciting a high-pitched grunt of pain from the robotic creature.

"Had enough?" I asked, frowning at him.

"I should ask you the same thing," Monokuma informed me, his eyes glowing an ominous red. "Violence against the headmaster is forbidden. It's against the school rules... I have no choice but to invoke my summoning magic! Save me! Gugnir the Spear!"

This would be critical. I'd already injured my ankle in preparation for this instant. As I stepped back, my ankle gave way once more and I fell back and to my right, without any control of my own. As my other foot came down to try to support me, the shoe I'd not tied properly this morning flew out from beneath me, and as the spears emerged from the floorboards and fell from the ceiling, I tumbled free from the killing zone, one spear lightly gashing my leg and a repeated strain on a repeatedly rolled ankle being my only injuries from the attempted murder.

The Monokuma bear suffered significantly more, and the blast from the self-destruct sequence launched a piece of the unit directly at me, knocking me unconscious.

As I slipped into unconsciousness, I realized I'd finally saved Mukuro's life. Finally, I'd found a way to avoid one of the deaths I'd thought unavoidable.

Perhaps this would be the time I could escape this place for good.

o6109o

Author's Notes:

So yeah, I'm a dirty liar. No updates for a long time? Pshaw!

I know I had to repeat a lot of dialogue, something I normally would try to avoid here, but it was necessary for the story and Naegi's development. Again though, do NOT expect this kind of update schedule. This is a free write project, mainly, so the quality of my work and the pacing of it may suffer as a result.

You've been warned.


	3. Chapter 3

The Perfection of Despair

Chapter 3: One

o6109o

I was slow to awaken after my injury. Only the fact I wasn't jolted awake on the same desk, at that same time, told me that whatever piece of Monokuma which had struck me as the bear exploded hadn't been a fatal wound. That actually set me to wondering... Had I ever gone a reset with brain damage? Had I ever spent days, months, or even years drooling in a wheelchair while my classmates had tended to me?

I hoped not. Though the troublesome thought, now lodged in my mind, would not escape no matter how much I called it unlikely.

With an effort of will I discarded it for a time as I opened my eyes with a groan, finding myself in the infirmary. I was well acquainted with it thanks to my constant resets, but I couldn't let myself admit that.

"Where?" I asked, cautiously testing my voice. My skull currently felt I'd been on the wrong end of a serious sparring match with Oogami, not to mention the kink in my neck and the throbbing in my ankle where I'd fallen improperly. Both my wrists were bound by thick straps, feeling like the sort that are used to hold unruly hospital patients.

I opened my eyes to find myself in the darkness of the infirmary at night, lying on a bed. To my left, to no great surprise, Junko Enoshima's imposter dozed in a chair. The instant I shifted, she jerked upright. The surprising part was the handcuffs which chained her to the chair she was in, and the heavy bolts which secured the chair to the floor, and the duct tape which was wound completely around her mouth.

She was as much a prisoner than I.

The great surprise was her virtual twin, to my right. I knew, then and there, that this was the true Junko Enoshima. Her features were as purely flawless as the images of her in magazines. Truly hers was a beauty which needed no Photoshop whatsoever. Even blaspheming her face with makeup would have been a sin, because makeup was intended to cover up the flaws in a person's appearance.

She had no flaws. Her eyelashes were long and full. Her lips were plump and bright, her skin a flawlessly pale colour except for the slight, natural blush which filled her cheeks when I turned my gaze towards her. She was a vision of perfection, even though I could see no makeup on her face at all.

No wonder she was the Super High School Level Supermodel, if she truly was here for that. Junko Enoshima was a perfect vision. Even the way she wore her school uniform, in a manner which should have looked slutty or trashy, instead just looked like coy teasing.

The presence of the knife she held in her hand was no great threat to me, though I did note that it was held with a grip I wouldn't have associated with a supermodel. It more resembled the grip her faker had held the knife with, though it wasn't close to a perfect emulation of it. I knew then and there, that the true Junko Enoshima was not nearly the fighter that Mukuro Ikasuba was.

"Monokuma, I take it?" I asked after a moment, frowning at the unbound girl.

"So, you've figured it out," Junko offered, her voice low and her tone to the point. One eyebrow raised subtly, the knife lazily dancing in her hand. She flicked her thumb once, the knife dancing around her forefinger once before she caught it in her hand once more. "May I ask how you figured out there was a killing trap in the gym?"

"What will you give me in return? That's valuable information," I informed her, grinning a bit. At her stoney gaze, I quirked my head. "Come now, I know you're going to erase my memory after this. Perhaps you'll even erase Mukuro's memory while you're erasing mine and everyone else. That's what you do, isn't it?"

"What makes you say that, Naegi-kun?" Junko asked as her voice, her whole demeanor, changed in an instant. Instead of being distant, she was acting every inch the cute idol, blushing as she held the knife in her hand to her cheek, blushing. "Ne, do you think I'm a naughty girl? What makes you think I can erase memories or whatever?"

"I'm a little taller than I was when I entered this school. Not much, but I'm short for a guy, so I paid attention to it. I'm the same height as Asahina, when I know from my research before coming that I was five centimeters shorter. I must have hit a growth spurt in the months since we arrived, before you stole our memories from us," I informed her bluntly, frowning. I shook my head. "I imagine that the reason you erased more of Kirigiri's memory has to do with the fact she's a Super High School Level Detective. She'd have noticed the same, unless she didn't think she could trust her memory in the first place. The rest, they'd be too distracted by your murder game to notice any small differences. Not even Sakura."

"Was I really so predictable," Junko pouted, her face falling as she stared at her hands. Her eyes rose to meet mine, and in them I saw tears glistening. She set the knife she held down as she wrung her hands, the creak of her straining her joints audible to my ears. "How is it that someone of your level could predict me so well?"

I was silent for a moment, before I finally spoke.

"The trap in the gym," I stated, changing the course of the conversation. "When you removed the floorboards to install it, you removed the boards perfectly, and put them back exactly as you found them. Except you would have had to varnish the floor again, otherwise the cracks would have stood out. Your mistake was that you didn't use the same stuff the workers used when they installed the floor. It had a slightly different sheen when viewed from a certain angle."

"Are you really so good at observation, Naegi-kun?" Junko giggled, once more putting on the cute act. I was beginning to suspect that the girl was hopelessly insane. "Just the change in the sheen told you that there was a trap? But what if it had been a bomb? It'd have blown you into little bits!"

"It never would have been a bomb," I retorted with a grin, my attempt to wave my hand for emphasis cut short as the tie-down straps jolted me. I tilted my head, meeting her eyes. "You're much too blatant, Enoshima. The murder game you wanted us to play would never have worked the way you wanted it to work if you were willing to risk killing a bunch of us in something as indiscriminate as an explosion. Not only that, but a bomb in the announcement hall could have scared everyone off from the game. No, it had to be something more direct, something more focused."

It would have been mesmerizing, the way even her pupils shifted as she changed her demeanor entirely, if it weren't so chilling. Her eyes turned cold and analytical once more, her voice dropping low and to the point.

"So again, Makoto Naegi, we come back to the question: How is it that someone of your level could predict me so well?" Junko demanded of me in that calm and collected voice of hers. She allowed her brow to furrow a bit, once more flipping the knife around her finger. "More to the point, how did you notice that my sister replaced me among the students? Her cover was perfect."

So... Mukuro was Junko's sister? Interesting.

"Not quite," I pointed out, shrugging once more, smiling. "I spent a few weeks when I was in middle school helping the drama club, and I learned how to spot even a good wig from real hair. To be honest, I didn't even predict you. I just noticed the floor because my father taught me how to repair a floor once. He mentioned the difference in light reflection different varnishes could cause. Between those two simple facts and your own actions as Monokuma, I've devised your methods."

"That's impossible," Junko informed me, her voice suddenly cold. Analytical.

"Of course it is," I replied, smirking at her. I waved my hands carelessly. "It's not like I know that Celetsia Ludenburg is really Taeko Yasuhiro, a common girl who's favourite food is gyoza made in her home province, or that Kirigiri is really the Super High School Level Detective, which is why her memory is more messed up than the average student's memory.

"And it's not like I know your sister here is a member of Fenrir, a terrorist group," I finished, frowning. It was time to see what I could fish out of Junko, now that I knew she was the person behind the plot. It was time for me to lie for all I was worth. "Is this the sort of counter-intel you have? Even with my cover and my memory erased, this is a pathetic plot. How did you manage to pull off what you have, huh?"

"I'll kill you myself," Enoshima promised, her voice depressed even as the knife she held was gripped firmly.

She had, however, made a mistake. As she rose to strike me, she'd apparently forgotten that she'd left me with my feet unbound. I bucked my hips and got my legs around her neck, bearing her down to the mattress as I scissored my legs closed on her throat, the knife in her hand weakly scraping at my legs but unable to do major damage thanks to the angle.

Thank you once again, Sakura-sensei. I don't even know why her family runs a Brazillian Jui Jutsu dojo, but the techniques she'd drilled into me had just saved my life once more, if only for the moment. Junko went limp, and then still. Not dead, but damned close. Even with the revelation that she was behind it all, I couldn't bring myself to kill her.

I twisted in my bed hitching my hips up and twisting my spine painfully so I could reach the straps binding my wrists with my teeth. I was halfway through the act of working the strap on my right hand free when I felt a sharp impact in my lower back, punching through my left kidney.

I was dead, my body just hadn't stopped moving yet.

I had just enough time to realize that Mukuro had only been acting captured as I sank back to my bed, feeling my body expelling blood with every heartbeat, as I watched Mukuro move to her sister's side, panic and regret equally evident on her face as she did so. Strangely, the tears in her eyes only started their way down her cheeks as she looked at me.

I mustered up a smile, and whispered "I'm sorry," and that only caused Mukuro to cry harder, clutching Junko's unconscious form. That was a little confusing, but I didn't really have time to ponder it as my last moments approached once more.

My vision faded.

I died.

o6110o

I woke up at my desk, but immediately I knew there was something new.

A feminine figure floated in white robes, her hood pulled forward enough to disguise her features, watching me as I stirred from my recent death.

This was new.

"Makoto Naegi, you have suffered for so long... Why do you continue to press on? Why not rest?" The figure demanded, her voice a clarion perfection I doubted could exist, yet there it was. Only intense focus, the kind I'd gained throughout my time, allowed me to resist the temptation.

"Forget that, madam Ghost," I retorted, frowning. "If you know I've suffered for quite some time, you know exactly why I'm here. Sooner or later, you'll tell me!"

There was a long pause, and then...

"Suffer longer, then," she informed me.

And disappeared.

o6110o

Author's Notes:

Troll moar, Naegi-kun! Yeah, Naegi was totes bullshitting Junko about the drama club and dad teaching him to fix floors stuff. He just needed an explanation which would let him continue to search for more information and which Junko probably couldn't prove wrong, off hand.

Also, and I realize this is a rather inopportune time to be saying it, but by the end of this story everything I've written will be believable and make sense according to the rules of the Dangan Ronpa universe.


End file.
